Obama pushes manufacturing ideas in North Carolina

ARDEN, N.C. – President Barack Obama’s permanent campaign arrived here Wednesday — this time as the first stop of a of a swing to hammer home proposals from his State of the Union address.

Standing on a stage in the middle of a factory floor and surrounded by its workers, Obama focused his remarks on the economic portion of the speech he gave to Congress Tuesday night, pushing for more federal government help for manufacturers and education and training assistance for workers.

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Obama’s plans ‘after this whole presidency thing’

Obama lacked the same energy from the podium that was on display at last month’s kick-off events for his immigration reform or the introduction of his gun control agenda or even on Tuesday night. But he used the setting to highlight an example of a company that did on its own what Obama hopes federal government assistance will do for others.

But Obama’s message was the same as it’s been on those initiatives, and on most of the other things he detailed in the State of the Union: he’s prepared to do a lot of things unilaterally, but Congress has got to act.

“Now, I’m doing what I can just through administrative action, but I need Congress to help,” Obama said. “I need Congress to do their part. I need Congress to take up these initiatives, because we’ve come too far and we’ve worked too hard to turn back now.”

As he did on the campaign trail last year, Obama called his economic agenda as a continuation of his work extracting the nation from recession. As he did in the Capitol Tuesday night, Obama called his policies straightforward solutions that have a history of bipartisan support — including lowering the corporate and manufacturing tax rates, creating a $6 billion program to help struggling communities beset by the loss of manufacturing jobs and boosting federal funding for job-training programs.

“Those are four common-sense steps that we can take right now to strengthen manufacturing in America,” Obama said after ticking through his agenda. “There’s no magic bullet here. It’s just some common-sense stuff.”

And just like when he was on the campaign trail, Obama was introduced by a local person emblematic of progress that can be made through his policies. In this case, it was a man who worked at the plant when it built Volvos and was laid off when the automaker closed the facility. The man then completed a college degree with federal government assistance, and was re-hired by Linamar, a Canadian firm that builds large engines in the same plant where Volvo once operated.

But Jason Furman, the deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council, said after Obama’s event that Linamar acted without aid from the education, training and relocation programs Obama hopes to launch. Obama will, without additional money from Congress, launch four “manufacturing institutes” aimed at helping communities with shuttered factories find new operators.